Loving What Is

I sit pondering questions about the mistreatment and abuse of animals. Time goes slowly for me when I am angry, tired and in pain. I am held in limbo retracing my steps as if they were inside a circle and I could not find my way out. I have completely closed myself off to other new and different points of view swimming and simmering inside a sea of me. I need to breathe some fresh air, let everything go and feel the sun simmering on my skin instead. Hear the birds singing and change my perspective for a few moments.

Animals love without conditions for the sheer joy loving brings them. There are no conditions to be met. Even when I have fallen down in my promises, they rise up to greet me, forgiving the past and beginning fresh, here, now. What can I learn from them?

Perhaps animals have more relaxing lives because they choose to experience them differently? What if I changed my perspective and loved everything without conditions, embracing everything and resisting nothing? What if I began accepting whatever happened was perfect and in alignment with my life and my purpose and I engaged life from this place instead?

Usually I am so engrossed in my thoughts, my actions are predicated by my past. I have categorized my life into little neat compartments of good, bad, right, wrong, beneficial, harmful … you fill in the blanks, which allows me to no longer even have to think at all! I become almost robotic in my habitual patterns and responses.

What if I engage with something new? My partner had a transforming moment in his life and now is a totally different person? An employee I was in conflict with before, is now totally in alignment with a project we are working on together? How could this old robotic way of thinking and responding detect a change? How often have I judged a person or situation by what I “thought” they were, instead of being truly in the moment with the “truth” of who they are now, here today? Am I living my life with “what IS true” or “what was true”? What points of view are running my life?

What if I simply have no judgment any longer? I am going to love them regardless of anything they have said or done, or whatever they say or do? At first glance I feel I will become a doormat to brush your feet upon or walk over, however, this is not true. Loving without conditions never prevents me from making choices. Animals make choices about who they want to engage with and whom they want to avoid. They might choose to play one moment and stop the next. Their kind of love allows choices to be made only in the ever present now.

I wonder how best to inspire people to different ways of seeing and experiencing our beautiful animal friends? Loving them and seeing them as wise and intelligent is not really something new. Many books exist about such evidence and programs have appeared on television validating such information. Perhaps it is the other end of the spectrum we need to consider?
Have you ever been so very angry and frustrated you took out your anger on something or someone? Have you ever yelled and screamed at someone or something, simply because you did not know what else to do? I have. I have seen many men scream at their cars and throw tools all over the place!! I remember saying and doing things I wish I could take back!! A friend of mine once beat a bunk bed with a glass chandelier he ripped off the ceiling and threw a mug through a window. We can often understand such actions. What some of us cannot understand, however, is when people intentionally, or unintentionally, take their anger out on another person, a child, or an animal friend, or something like a car, a building, or a restroom door perhaps! :-). As I get older, my compassion and wisdom deepens and I realize when you are caught up inside your anger and frustration, sometimes it doesn’t matter “what IT is”! You just use whatever might be convenient or close at hand!

I encountered various kinds of things like this in the 60’s with racial issues and the peace movement. No one taught us how to deal with conflicts, stress and fear when they came to the surface! Two young men drove through our neighborhood in a convertible car with the top down, laughing and music playing loudly, throwing raw meat into yards where they saw dogs. It had strychnine in it and the dogs died almost instantly. I never understood the meaning of their actions as my beloved friend died in my arms. Earlier someone stole my dog because white shepherds were highly prized back then. The woman called the number on his tag to tell me she was giving him a good home and hung up! Why would people do things like this? Why do people do cruel things to animals like inflict pain, abandon them to starve and so on?

I believe the solution lies inside the realization both sides are suffering from similar problems. People in labs often believe they are “fighting to save peoples lives” and are willing to make any sacrifice necessary, even if animals must suffer and die in the process. Human Beings in war sacrifice themselves for each other. Other people fight to save animals lives and to prevent animals from suffering. Yet hating and fighting each other only causes more of what we are striving to eliminate, the anger and frustration which leads to the very actions we desire to change.

Perhaps as the animals have taught me, we can simply give Love instead of hating our enemies and wanting to “beat some sense into them!” Those kinds of actions do not promote healing, they inspire separation. Most often those who are beaten as children are starving for love and the only role models they had were people who beat them!

Perhaps Love might stand a chance at making a bigger movement? Loving what is, loving those who are angry, lost, unknown and unappreciated, confused and alone. Perhaps giving what we all want so much, to just be loved for who we are, might begin to transform our world, one person, one animal at a time?

Perhaps beginning a campaign to “share the love” of animals and inspire people to merely send love to all animals in labs, those who become our food, and those who are abused, might just be a place to begin? Certainly people would be More Inspired to such a project or campaign than signing up to fight yet another lab or meat production facility and yelling and screaming mean and hateful things to the other side. Asking people to send loving thoughts and prayers gets them more aligned with the animals. They think more about them. They begin to spend just a moment or two wondering “if” the animals are living happy lives? Maybe they need to put more time into loving their own animal friends and thinking about how animals are treated in labs and factories and at breeders?? It is just an idea. One I believe more people might be inspired to join. Sometimes a big change begins with something which seems too small and simple to even make a difference, and yet it transforms our world. Just planting a seed.

I do hope someday soon, Human Beings can begin to use their great brilliance and wisdom to more deeply connect with Nature and all her millions of creatures. Take time to Give One Moment of Gratitude every day to our beloved planet and all of nature for providing us with All the resources we need to create every single thing we eat, use, wear, live in, drive upon, fly in, and on and on. The sun and moon and stars do not charge us a thing. The waters flow freely. The ground grows our crops regardless of the ways we endlessly abuse and misuse it. We tear down the forests, pollute the waters and just complain there is never “enough” of what we desire or need or want.

My solution is to Love Without Conditions, because I truly believe that is what humans need most of all. When we are loved and can learn to love fully, we appreciate ourselves and each other. We see and experience more of the truth. We connect more deeply with each other, with nature, animals and all of life. Real love, given freely without conditions, for the sheer joy it brings, does no harm and can often create miracles, which humans are sometimes not capable of creating alone. We need more love and it costs me nothing to give love and share and expand love more fully into each and every day.